Yes, that would explain everything.
Of course, in my opinion it doesn't seem intuitive to get a "critical hit" notification if you did not cause sufficient damage to actually damage or destroy a module, but that only shows how bad I am at understanding WG's game design decisions.

I know that and so I am not surprised that I did not complete the mission. What I find surprising is that in the battle results screen no critical damage is shown at all. E.g. in the picture below, I hit the IS-7 twice, both time receiving "critical hit" notifications, but there is no critical damage marked in the battle results - not tracks, not vision device - nothing. This is what I find surprising. Is it a bug? Is critical hit not registered if the player uses a repair kit to repair a module (doesn't seem so, but who knows with WG)? Something else?

Not sure if this is worthy a separate topic, but I was unable to found any information on this issue.
So, I am trying to complete HT 4:4, which requires me to damage 6 internal modules or crew members in enemy tanks. Not having any Japanese heavies nor KV-2 and not getting the mission done via regular play, I've decided to give it a try firing only HE from E100 (yes, yes, I know, this is a sacrilege, but I was impatient and wanted to complete it as fast as possible). As it can be expected, every time I hit anything, there's notification about the critical hit. But in the results screen after the battle I see only a few critical hits (or even none at all). Does it mean that there is "critical hit" notification every time you hit someone with HE shell, even if no actual module is damaged?

Basically there is no answer to this question. For any number x of the games played there is still probability y, that your result in those x games is "incorrect" by some percentage z compared to your "true" skill in that tank. As the number x increases, the combination y*z decreases. But even if you played 10,000 games, there is still (very small) possibility y, that there is some significant difference z between your "true" skill and your achieved result. It is possible to get very unlucky in any amount of games, just the possibility gets smaller and smaller and smaller. At least that's what I keep telling myself after I have a string of 300 games with 43% WR...

I was wondering, what is the impact of reusable repair kits on the repair skill? Is it still the highest priority for any tank which is even remotely likely to participate in a brawl, or has it became less important and can be trained as second or third skill, after camo/gun handling/mobility/etc.?
As the new patch hasn't hit the EU server yet, what are the impressions on the NA players regarding this issue?

Am I the only one who thinks that almost identical team composition would have negative impact? Yes, at the moment there is an issue on certain maps, but in general "unwinable" compositions do not happen that often. And I find it interesting to have asymmetrical teams, where you have to analyse strengths and weaknesses of your and enemy tanks and decide, what part of the map and what tactics will give you and advantage. Making all compositions "fair" would make the game much more boring for me.

Bought it a few days ago and I AM IN LOVE!!! After trying to complete HT 3.12 (bounce triple HP + do 2k damage) in IS-7 for a hundred or so battles I abandoned all hope and started researching German heavy line from the scratch just for this damn mission. 200+ battles in E 75? Nope. 200+ battles in E 100? Still nope. And then I've purchased E5. 15 battles later it bounced more than 8k without me even trying too hard.

Why do you insist on putting female crew directly into Tier 10? If you don't have TVP (or any other tank you want to have female crew for) researched, put them in the tank from that line that you currently have (even if that's Tier 6 or 7) and go on grinding that line. Even if you don't spend gold, 10% primary skill loss on retraining is not that big of a deal - by the time you reach Tier 10, your girls will have at least one additional skill fully trained, probably more.

Wow, thanks a million for such an exhaustive reply!
Today I found out that Black Prince, which was firmly in the second place of my Most Hated list, can actually work, at least sometimes. So maybe there's hope for SU-152 as well.

I am a big fan of this tank as well. It has it all. Lack of maneuverability is compensated by complete absence of armor. Huge size means that even blind monkey will have no problems hitting it. Gun is very versatile as well - you can't shoot from long distance, because it takes shell half an hour to travel anywhere and even if the target is not moving, horrible accuracy means that you are very unlikely to hit anything, and you can't shoot from close distance, because you have no armor nor agility to avoid getting shot three times in return. Aiming takes forever, which works just great with a soft huge TD, which cannot survive in the open longer than a few seconds. And best of all - after waiting for 20 seconds to reload, you can do those oh so impressive 200 dmg with a HE shell. I've never rage-sold the tank so far, but I have a feeling that I am very close this time.
Please, please, please, give me some advice how to make it work? After reading this thread I do understand that I should use HEAT shells much more liberally (although I have problem avoiding bounces with them). But what about general play style, positioning, etc.?

But doesn't it make sense to adjust your decisions based on XVM information? E.g. early rush to some high-risk, high-reward position might be a good idea and the straightest path to a victory if enemy players in fast tanks are below average, but too risky if they are good? I've never used XVM, but always assumed that such information could be useful when deciding your approach. Or am I completely wrong here (and why, if so)?

Unless we assume you are immortal, the answer might depend on your age. Let us assume that any alternative investments are so much inferior that we aren't even discussing them. Let us assume that you do not have any children or simply do not care about them. So, if you are 20 and expect to live another 60 years, you can expect 600,000 of total income from your investment. But if you are 80 years old, it is very likely that you will die within next 10 years, so if you have 200,000 USD spare, you will probably achieve a higher standard of living by simply spending these money instead of investing them and spending only the returns.

Actually, there is right answer. Find what is the risk-adjusted return for an alternative investments and you've got your answer. If the best possible alternative gives you 5% return after adjusting for risk, then you should buy the factory as long as the price is below 200,000 (which would result in the yearly return of 5% or higher). If the price is higher than that, you should choose an alternative investment instead. Of course, in the real world it is very difficult to evaluate the risk with high precision. Also most people are risk-averse, so they prefer smaller (risk-adjusted) return with a lower risk, so they would choose 5% return with zero risk over 10% return with 10% risk of losing their investment (which is still 9% return after adjusting for risk), even if this is not rational.

In my experience reading books provides some foundation, but is in general quite inefficient way of learning past the very basics.
Come up with some kind of idea, some kind of application you would like to create (try to find a balance between something so simple you don't need any additional learning in order to implement it and something so complicated you have no idea where to start) and then start working on it. Hands-on learning is the most efficient way. While I spent 6 years in the university studying programming (Master's Degree in Computer Science), almost everything I've learned was learned either in hobby projects or in actual job. Uni is a great to learn abstract stuff, like math, concepts of modelling, etc., but real-world development can only be learned by actually programming stuff.
And don't worry if the idea you came up with was already implemented with someone else. You don't need to create an unique app in order to learn.
And while I might be somewhat partial here, C++ is a great tool for learning. Certainly not the simplest, but it has both low entry level (it is not that difficult to start working with it, as you are mostly using C, but skipping some of the more complicated memory management) and almost unlimited possibilities for improving – after 3 years of professional development I thought I finally mastered it, then changed job and found out that I was barely scratching the surface of what is possible.
As a bonus you actually get some understanding of inner workings of pointers and memory allocation, instead of simply trusting the garbage collector to do the job.

Well, while this is obviously bad game balance, at least it pretty much reflects the real history of the development in armored warfare – by 1950-ies heavy tanks became obsolete and were replaced by MBTs, an evolution of the medium tanks.